Everything You Need To Know About 'Love Island,' The Best (Worst) Show on Television
Watching an episode of Love Island, the British dating show phenomenon that just finished its fourth season to record-breaking ratings, is like taking a trip to the zoo. The petting zoo. The heavy-petting zoo. Do you see where I'm going here?
In the same way a zoo is an ethically-nebulous establishment constructed for humans to learn more about exotic (and dramatic) animals we might not ordinarily encounter in our day-to-day lives, Love Island is a reality TV construction built so its viewers can learn how "conventionally" attractive–i.e. hella toned, tanned, and mostly white–people get it on. Literally, that's the point of the show. (Yes, the show's casting is problematic, falling far short of representing any real semblance of diversity amongst its hotties, and the racialized politics of hook-up culture are laid out there alongside the pool. Ironically, this is probably one of the most candid components of the highly contrived production.)
The show’s concept–yes, sex–is straight-forward, until it isn’t, because Love Island often seems to be making it up as it goes along, and that’s half the fun; the dating game is often messy like that IRL too. It begins with 10-12 people, all primed to hawk dubious detox teas and and weight loss gummies on Instagram, thrown together in a reclaimed farmhouse villa situated in a quaint town on the Spanish island of Mallorca.
The contestants are known as "Islanders," making them sound more tropical than their accents, grasp of geography, and Missguided and PrettyLittleThing outfits would otherwise suggest. (These two online boutiques sponsor the show, and reportedly send the Islanders free weekly wardrobe updates.) In episodes aired six nights a week, and basically in real-time, Love Island chronicles their respective quests to find love and develop a social media strong enough it will secure paid nightclub appearances for the next year or so. Like true Brits on vacay, this involves them all getting wasted, flirting, bitching, tanning and banging their way through a two-month-long season without any real encounter with actual Spanish people or the island's culture.
As the show plays out, the Islanders mingle, date, and pair up of their own volition/hormones; most importantly, they go through ritualistic "couplings" and "recouplings" around a primal fire pit in the villa's garden to make things official-you know, like a FB status. Here after days/weeks of scintillating conversation, producer-led confrontations, bed-sharing, and possibly "doing bits" (anything from an under-duvet fumble to actual boning-though this year's season included a change in format which banned full-on intercourse from airing on TV), they choose the partner they want to move forward and, you know, do more "bits" with.
These pick'ems are usually accompanied by an extremely romantic speech that mentions how much they love it when the other person makes them toast in the morning. I cried when one contestant said of their Love Island bae, "you never let my water bottle get empty." It was better than when Meghan married Harry.
Now, here is where it gets a little spicy–these "coupling" ceremonies are almost always designed to leave at least one sadsack without a partner, and they're eliminated from the show. (Sometimes the viewers vote people out too, just to keep things messy.)
I have been known to gasp in real-deal horror during the displays of backstabbing and tactics that play out as much as I did during Games of Thrones' iconic "red wedding" scene–savvy Islanders are known to have as much loyalty to their lovers as the Kardashians to their OG faces, and mix things up just as often. In fact, Love Island betrayals are even moreso brutal, actually, because everyone still has to hang out together afterwards whereas, you know, the Starks basically all died.
To drop another Game of Thrones reference, then, because Love Island is equally compelling: Queen Danaerys' dragons have nothing on the the fire a scorned Islander breathes when she realizes the guy she has known for two days–and, sure, who had no real obligation to her beyond saying that she was "a sort"–has kissed someone else on the day beds.
As people are voted out, new Islanders arrive, replenishing the dating pool and the temptation it represents but not usually diversifying it. Also, they often even have the same names: in this summer's season alone there were two Lauras, two Charlies, two Jacks, two Joshs, and two Alexs–oh, and an Alexandra, who "coupled up" with an Alex for a while; it's as if God instructed Noah to only save animals people who had the spiritual fortitude it takes to ferociously dry hump on camera.
Love Island producers are alchemists who understand that the formula it takes to create heteronormative romance demands jealousy, insecurity and people with razor-sharp abs to pose a threat to your existing relationship. (In fact, the show's production manual recently "leaked" to a British tabloid, revealing how far is, well, massaged if not outright manipulated.) Think Big Brother meets The Bachelor, but on more steroids than your average Bachelorette bro.
To test the relationships further there are various ‘fun’ games and challenges, which mostly involve Spandex costumes, provocations, frottage, and, bizarrely often, the pouring of various foods and drinks into one person's mouth, and transferring it to their partner's, and then a bucket–the couple with the most amount of liquid in their bucket at the end of a seemingly arbitrary amount of time wins. That’s amore! Sometimes I feel the ideals that Love Island projects are just too lofty to attain in reality, by which I mean, how will I ever find a man to regurgitate soup into?
(There are mostly no prizes, beyond screentime, but sometimes Islanders win "a day out" which essentially means they are bussed to a location that looks exactly like the villa they just left, and continue lay by the pool, drink warm prosecco, and gossip about each other just as they'd do otherwise.)
Anyway, over eight long and lusty weeks of this nonsense, the Islanders get whittled down to three or four couples-this season, that's 8 of 38 contestants who popped up and popped off and then left mostly ignominiously. Of these finalists, one lucky pair wins, wait for it, ￡50,000, by being voted as the viewing public's faves. That's about $65,000, and yes, the winning couple has to split it almost always–thanks to a farce of a game wherein the winning couple each picks an envelope; one has a check for the money, and the other has nothing. The Islander who picks out the envelope with the 50K has to decide whether to keep the money or split it with their partner in a final test of compatibility, integrity and loyalty.
Typically, these suckers split it because of "love" or whatever. I am waiting for a woman-in my dreams, a woman of color-to choose the envelope with the money, dramatically look at the camera on live TV and declare that, "the only true love is the one you have for yourself, ladies" while keeping the cash for herself. Reparations and all that.
Look, it is on the record that when I tuned into the first episode, I was skeptical at best, dismissive at worst. It isn’t that I am a pop-culture snob. Quite the opposite. Pop-culture is high culture. I love it. Inject into my veins. But I am also a romantic. In fact, calling me a romantic is like saying Beyoncé can hold a note. My faith in all things true love defines me, so I was understandably wary of a show that seemed to make a mockery of the Ephron-esque magic that occurs when you like someone and they miraculously like you back.
But I was forced to recant on my stance after a few episodes when I realized that I–like many Love Island converts–underestimated the indulgent escapism that comes with the show's performative ritualization of romance, the delight when said romance actually plays out for real, and the even sweeter schadenfreude when the "muggy" bro's latest conquest turns him down. These are (some of) the reasons why Love Island has taken over summer evenings across the U.K.-in 2017, more people applied to appear on the show than to attend Oxford or Cambridge universities. Less intellectual elitism, then, although probably the same amount of institutionalized racism (but that's by the by). And honestly, it makes sense, because in today’s age a solid grasp of sponcon is more lucrative pursuit an actual degree.
Not only does it enable our snide eyerolls and thirst for judging people who are do exactly what we do on Tinder, but on TV, but Love Island speaks to our emotional cores. It is quite something to spot and witness, close-up, the unfurling of a personality amid intimacy both forced and natural, the shedding of protective layers, the cultivation of a connection accelerated by proximity, bed-sharing and the fact that any given couple has probably farted around each other sooner than they would have done IRL.
The world around us is dark, cynical and hard–even the British summer heat can feel oppressive. But while it's both hot and heated in its own way, Love Island provides the cool relief that comes with the re-igniting of our collective belief in rom-com romance as well as the fact that most folks fuck it up. It is possible to have it all! And lose it all!
And so, in the same it’s fascinating to monitor how animals held in captivity fare when released back into the wild, I am sure I and the rest of the nation whose summer was hijacked by Love Island's cookie-cutter cuties will be waiting with bated breath to see how the loved-up couples fare in a world where they are not the only people who exist. Love Island is over, but it's also only just beginning...
All four glorious seasons of Love Island are available to stream on Hulu-so get your binge on. And maybe also start prepping your application for a U.S. version of the show, because per Deadline, it could be happening.
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